Fastly compared to Akamai

On this page you can find an overview of the features and pricing of Fastly and Akamai. We hope this helps you compare these two Content Delivery Networks. You can find additional tips that help you select the right CDN here.

Self-proclaimed ‘new generation CDN service’, Fastly offers a full-SSD network and PoPs in North America, Brazil, Europe, APAC and Australia & New Zealand. Their Fastly Cloud Accelerator partnership with Google allows Fastly clients to connect directly to the Google Cloud backbone, and configure a Fastly origin shield in front of their GCE storage bucket. The partnership might be considered a way for both parties to compete with Amazon Web Services (AWS), and their S3 storage solution and Cloudfront CDN service. Other CDN providers participating in the Google Cloud Platform CDN Interconnect program are EdgeCast, Highwinds, Level3, Akamai and CloudFlare.

Fastly uses web application accelerator Varnish, and allows clients to upload their custom VCL (Varnish Configuration Language) to the Fastly platform. Currently, there is one alternative to Fastly when it comes to uploading custom VCLs, and that is ‘developer CDN’ section.io.

On-boarding with Fastly is quick & easy and can be done without intervention a sales representative. Their extensive API-tools include purging, stats and config management. For an overview of Fastly’s features, check out the table below or make comparisons with other CDN providers.

Accounting for a large portion of the world’s Web traffic, Akamai’s Intelligent Cloud Computing Platform is built on top of 200,000 servers, in over 110 countries, within more than 1,400 networks in the world.

In the CDN industry, Akamai Technologies is a large player. The company holds a variety of CDN related patents, and is no stranger to patent infringement disputes. In 2005 Akamai Technologies acquired competitor Speedera, a move that ended a long-lasting dispute over Speedera-held patents. Additionally, Akamai has been in a dispute with Limelight Networks since 2006 over an alleged patent infringement - a case that came to an end in August 2015, with Limelight being held liable for the infringement.

Through the Google Cloud Platform CDN Interconnect program, Akamai has established a peering arrangement with Google’s Cloud Platform. Joined by Highwinds, CloudFlare, Fastly, Level3 and EdgeCast, Akamai has established private interconnects with Google edge locations, to the benefit of both parties customers. Compared to data traffic routing over the public Internet, traffic via the interconnects suffers less latency, and the connection is more reliable. Google Cloud platform who use GCE as their origin receive a discount to their egress origin traffic routed via Akamai.

AKAMAI Resellers

Akamai has an extensive reseller program and works with a large amount of partners to resell its services. One of those parties is Warpcache.

Interested in learning more about the company, Akamai services and Akamai pricing? Contact Warpcache here.